Pre-roll gates are a great way to generate new leads with high value video content. A post-roll CTA is adding an interactive event to the end of your video so once that audience member consumes the whole content, you can present them with very specific actions to take as their next step. At the end of that video, again, what do you want the audience member to do after consuming that video? During a product demo, you’re typically not gonna add interactive CTAs during the middle because you want somebody to progress through the content, but at the end of the video, of course, this is a great opportunity to add a post-roll CTA to make sure you’re sending them on that next step, whether it be to watch the next video in the series or again, perhaps watch a customer story of somebody who used that product or that feature to generate success within their own business. This is something we would create and put out on our blog as great educational content, but there are lots of opportunities here during playback to have interactive annotations that link out to related content. As somebody’s watching that webinar, offer them jump-off points. Not that many people are gonna stay tuned for the full 30, 45 minutes, whatever it might be, but if you have interactive events throughout, you offer them an opportunity to take a conversion point, to download a related guide or to visit a page related to something they’re speaking about during the webinar. It may be, again, a form to request a demo or some kind of action to take at the end of that webinar. Video within an email nurture can be a great way to boost response rates, including customer videos, promotional videos or other types of explainers, but again, think about how you can add interactive events to make sure if somebody clicks on that video in the email, they’re taken off and they watch that video that they have an immediate conversion point that you can get them into a sales cycle.
Online and interactive video is become an increasingly important part of today’s digital marketing, lead generation, and demand gen programs, partly because it can help you reach a broader audience, but more importantly because it can help you boost conversion rates across the myriad of programs that you’re already running today. Not only is video a great way to boost audience engagement, but by adding interacting elements to your existing video content, you can generate more new leads, accelerate the buyer’s journey, and boost conversation rates across your email marketing, content marketing, and other demand gen programs.
My name is Tyler Lessard, and in this Chalk Talk, we’ll explore how you can use interactive video capabilities to generate more leads, create more pipeline, and produce more sales-ready opportunities for your sales team.
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3 Types of Interactive Video
Now the first thing to understand with interactive video is that it doesn’t mean you have to go out and create all new videos that are meant to be interactive. With platforms like Vidyard, you can easily add interactive capabilities to existing video content to turn those videos into new lead gen machines. Here are the three different types of interactive capabilities that you can add to existing videos or to new videos you create. The first are pre-roll gates. A pre-roll gate is an interactive event that pops up at the beginning of a video and will prompt the user to enter some form of information, their email address, name, or so on, before they’re allowed to continue watching that video content. Pre-roll gates are a great way to generate new leads with high value video content. The second are mid-roll annotations. A mid-roll annotation is something that pops up as an overlay within the video during playback, so it could be a small sign up form that pops up at the bottom of the video during a certain portion. It could be an indication to click on something for related content or a related customer story. Lots of different ways in which you can use interactive annotations and popups during video playback to drive the next step in the buyer’s journey. And finally, perhaps most important, are the post-roll calls to action. A post-roll CTA is adding an interactive event to the end of your video so once that audience member consumes the whole content, you can present them with very specific actions to take as their next step. It could be as simple as a button to drive them to a related page, or it could be an interactive form to get them to register for a demo or download some kind of related asset.
Using Interactive Events to Wow
So let’s talk about how to use these different types of interactive events within the existing types of videos that you may already be investing in today as a demand gen team to get more value and start generating more leads very, very quickly. So over here we’ve got a list of some of the different types of videos you may already be investing in as a marketing organization and using them across your website, your blog, your webinar channels, your email marketing, as well as with your sales team for one-to-one video messaging. So we’re gonna start at the top here and talk about the different types of interactive events and which ones you’ll want to consider depending on the type of video and its stage within the buyer’s journey. So let’s start at the top of the buyer’s journey with content that many of you likely have on your website today which are explainer and overview videos. These are the videos that are introducing the pain, the potential gain, and what you offer at a high level to your audience. You never wanna pre-gate these assets. You want everybody to lean in and consume the content, but think about how during playback you could add mid-roll annotations to link out to related content so that individual if they’re ready to take the next step, you offer them a jumping off point at a few different spots. For example, as you’re talking about a specific solution capability, you could have an interactive event to jump off to download a related guide or to read or interact with a customer story that relates back to that solution. The second thing you’ll want to do is add a post-roll call to action. So at the end of watching that video, what do you want that individual to do? It may be to request a demo, it may be to visit a customer solution, it may be to continue on down the page and interact with more content, but lots of different ways in which you can add an interactive event to make sure you drive the next step, whether they’re consuming that video on your website, a third party channel, or on your social media channels. The next type of video are customer testimonials. Customer stories are a great way to get your audience emotionally connected to your brand, to really lean into a powerful story, but how do you activate that right away? Well, interactive events is a perfect thing to do. So again you don’t want to pre-roll gate these videos, but mid-roll annotations can again be a great way to offer somebody a jumping off point as they’re listening to the story to learn more about something related to that customer story. Perhaps a customer is…
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